Caroline Heffernan

Thursday, 15 January 2015

I can’t believe it’s been a
year and seven months since my most recent blog post. Thank you to my friends who have urged me to
get writing again.Anxiety laden, I’m beginning
today, and hope to write at least one blog a week from now on.

It’s so lovely to have readers,
they’re really important, but I’ve begun to realise it’s also vital I de-clutter
my head by writing down some of my thoughts.

I was really nervous as I
opened my blog folder on my lap top just now.I’ve called the file ‘Thank You Maeve’ and my first blog is ‘We’ll miss
you Maeve.’ I wrote it following the
death of Maeve Binchy in August 2012.She
inspired me.I loved her writing as a
teenager, and her chat made me laugh as an adult.Every time I heard her voice on the radio my
spirits lifted. http://bit.ly/1B1RogB

Checking back on the date of my
last blog, (19th June 2013), I cringe as I realise my first task is to
insert a missing word in the very first line…now how did I miss that?!

I stopped writing for pleasure
in September 2013 when I began a full-time masters in Irish Literature and
Culture at NUI Maynooth.I thought my experience as a mature student
would be perfect blogging material, but instead everything I wrote sounded
worthy.

It was the print version of the
earnest, and annoying, radio ads churned out every autumn, extoling the virtues
of becoming a mature student. Being a mature student is fantastic… it’s fun, exhilarating
and stressful…and a privilege of course to be able to grasp a second chance at
education…but those incessant ads grate on my nerves.

My life as a mature student
began aged 37, when I got a place on the UCD
access course (based in Pobalscoil Neasáin, Baldoyle) in September 2002
studying English and Politics.It was
brilliant, I loved every minute of it.

My friend Gemma was the
catalyst for this.Having completed my
leaving cert in Malahide Community School in 1982, along with about forty other
students I did really badly in English, a subject I was passionate about.

There were two great English teachers
in our school with very different teaching styles, but the results from both
classes were awful.Back in touch with
my own teacher Catherine Kilbride, she told me recently that memories of that
results day in August 1982 still haunt her.She left the school soon afterwards becoming principal of the now closed
Miss Meredith’s school in Baggot Street…where Maeve Binchy taught too for a
time.The other teacher, the late Ann
Colville, had a letter she wrote complaining of the ‘closing of ranks’ within
the Department of Education published in The
Irish Times.At that time there was
no recourse for teachers or students but thankfully that has changed.

Anyway…sick of listening to me
talking about repeating the English exam, Gemma urged me to move on, complete the ‘return to
learning’ course and do an English degree instead.I really wasn’t sure I’d be able for it.

That famous D was the impetus
for my further studies.Over the next
few weeks I hope I’ll have a bit more to say about my three years from
2004-2007 as a mature student in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra…described
by my husband as ‘the Carlsberg of degrees’…and my recent year in NUI, Maynooth
where I was totally absorbed, challenged and stressed out.

I
said to Bernadette that I wished I could work in my own home like a professional
cleaner would…whizzing around for close to three hours creating a lovely clean
house with an unmistakable fresh smell in the air.

Bernadette
set me a challenge.

‘Pretend
you’re a cleaner coming in to your house once a week and work for three
hours uninterrupted.Hoover and wash the
floors, clean the bathrooms and do some dusting (dusting!) or wipe a few
windows…but this is a bonus… you stop after three hours and you don’t do it
again for a week.’

STOP
after three hours and don’t do it again for a week… sounded brilliant!

I
decided that today I’d start with one hour.Now this wasn’t actually
cheating.I had pottered and faffed
around for lots of hours yesterday and even did an hour’s pottering and faffing this morning before Bernadette called at ten…so one hour today would be
a good start.

I
closed my lap top.

I
put my phone on silent and as I noticed two missed ‘events’ I avoided the temptation
to phone Pauline and text Jean... this could be my treat after my hour’s
housework.

Of
course I wanted to check Facebook and Twitter.…but I didn’t succumb…not even a sneaky
glance.

Firstly
I had to ignore the clean wet clothes in the machine.I love hanging washing on the line so this would have been
cheating. Even on a gorgeous sunny day with
‘lots of drying out’ I had to resist.

I
also had to resist folding and sorting the two baskets of dry clothes sitting on
the kitchen floor.You see I love doing
this job too.I find it therapeutic and inevitably
slip into a daydream thinking that maybe Barbara Scully or Eithne Reynolds have written a new blog
that I must read...urgently.I’m also quite
likely to be distracted by The Sunday
Business Post folded on the couch beside me as I spot another article I
missed the previous week.

So
temptation avoided, I got to work.

The
bathrooms were scrubbed.

The
kitchen floor was mopped and as for the hall…well this had been driving me mad
since my son’s 18th birthday party…ahem on 31st May…but now
it looks great and even smells of pine!

Halfway
through my daughter asked me for a lift to her friend’s house.Normally I wouldn’t hesitate…conversations
with teenagers happen in cars…but this time I told her she’d have to wait half
an hour.

No
problem there…she was amused and delighted by my new found domesticity.

As
55 minutes approached I quickly changed my duvet cover.

Usually
I end up groaning in horror as I’m about to go to bed at midnight and realize I’ve
either forgotten (or avoided) the fact that I stripped the bed that morning.

Now the laptop is open…and I feel great.

In
a few minutes I’ll phone Pauline and text Jean.

Then
I’ll hang the clothes on the line.

Then
I can fold the other ones.

And
maybe then I can read for a little while.

I think I’m actually looking
forward to my three hours cleaning next week.

All
three of us agreed that we loved, loved, loved, the chat from authors Pat
McCabe and Michael Harding.

They
spoke about their writing, read from their work and explained the influence McGahern
had had on each of them.

As
McCabe read from his novel The Stray Sod
Country he adopted the various accents of his characters.A natural mimic his delivery was hilarious.

He
told us a great story about his eighty six year old father-in-law who was
sitting in the audience.

‘Having
spent sixty years in education…The Master, as we call him…said

“Pat,
what’s this book where you can say anything you like about anything at all?”

…it’s
called Facebook I replied.’

Michael
Harding had the audience enthralled in Aughawillan Community Hall this
morning.

Like
McCabe, he used various voices to capture the nuances of different characters from
different parts of Ireland. These
characters weren’t fictitious.They were
real people from real life that Harding had met along the way.

He
treated us to a scene capturing the brevity of speech he identifies with people
from Leitrim compared to the verbosity of speech of those who hail from Cavan
as epitomized by his late mother Nellie.

Harding’s
delivery is subtle and comic.I wish I
could capture how funny it was.

As
I type this I can hear his voice (or voices!) in my head along with the
laughter that echoed through the packed hall.

Of
course for anyone who has read Harding’s memoir Staring at Lakes (I’m half way through) or his regular Irish Times column they’ll know he has
lots of serious suggestions on how to engage better with ourselves and the wider
world …but he’s never preachy and often funny.

Harding
believes ‘we spend more time in the remembrance than the experience of a story.’As we retell it ‘we enter more deeply into
the experience and the telling enriches it.’

Yeah
I think he was saying we exaggerate the event, alter facts, focus on different
aspects each time, but ‘the remembrance becomes more deeply rich’ for this.

I’d
a brilliant twenty four hours and have two more signed books to add to my collection.